Many people know someone who is living with more than one long-term health problem. A person might have diabetes, heart disease, depression, or another ongoing condition.
Having several health issues at the same time becomes more common as people get older. Scientists have now found something surprising. It may not only matter which diseases a person develops, but also the order in which those diseases appear.
The new research was published in The Lancet Public Health. It suggests that the sequence of health conditions can have a major effect on life expectancy.
Long-term health conditions are becoming a growing challenge around the world. In the United Kingdom, more than one in four adults live with at least two ongoing health problems. The numbers become much higher with age.
About 65 percent of people over the age of 65 have multiple long-term conditions, and the figure rises to about 82 percent among people over 85 years old. These health problems can reduce independence, lower quality of life, and increase the need for medical care.
To better understand this issue, researchers examined the medical records of more than 1.6 million adults in the United Kingdom. They focused on three common but serious conditions.
The first was diabetes, a disease that affects the body’s ability to control blood sugar levels. The second was psychosis, a severe mental health condition that can affect thoughts, feelings, and a person’s sense of reality. The third was congestive heart failure, a condition in which the heart cannot pump blood around the body effectively.
The researchers wanted to know whether the order of these conditions made any difference to survival. The results were unexpected. They found that the same health conditions could have very different effects on life expectancy depending on when they happened.
For example, if a person first developed diabetes, later experienced a serious mental health condition, and then went on to develop heart failure, that person could lose around 13 years of life expectancy. However, if the same diseases appeared in a different order, the reduction in life expectancy could be much smaller.
For a man aged 50, the difference could amount to more than 10 additional years of life. This finding shows that the timing of diseases can be just as important as the diseases themselves.
The researchers also made another interesting discovery. Having more than one health problem was not always associated with a worse outcome. Some people who had both diabetes and a serious mental health condition actually lived longer than people who had only a mental health condition.
There may be several reasons for this. People with diabetes often have regular appointments with doctors and nurses. They may receive more frequent health checks, blood tests, and medical advice.
These regular visits can help doctors identify other problems earlier and provide treatment sooner. Better monitoring and ongoing care may improve overall health and increase life expectancy.
The findings could have important implications for healthcare systems. Doctors usually pay attention to the number of health conditions a person has, but this study suggests they should also consider the order in which those conditions develop.
Understanding disease sequences could help doctors identify people at higher risk and provide earlier treatment and support.
The researchers noted that the study has some limitations. It relied on medical records collected during routine healthcare visits. Sometimes these records contain missing information or mistakes. Because of this, further studies are needed to confirm the results and explore the reasons behind the patterns that were observed.
The scientists also believe this idea could be useful for studying other groups of health problems. For example, future research may examine long-term health issues that appear after COVID-19 infection or other complex conditions that affect many parts of the body.
Understanding how illnesses develop over time could lead to better screening tools and more personalized healthcare.
The main message from this research is simple but powerful. It is not only important to know which diseases a person has. It is also important to understand when those diseases occur and how they interact over time.
By paying closer attention to the order of health conditions, doctors may one day be able to help people live longer, healthier, and better-quality lives.
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